When I was a small child I had an asthmatic condition, and my parents sought healing for me through Christian Science. When I wasn't readily healed, in their loving concern for me they chose instead to rely on medical means. But healing eluded the best efforts of my doctors.
During the many years I was under medical care, each week I attended the Christian Science Sunday School. Because of my poor health I made slow progress in schoolwork. But when I was twelve a Sunday School teacher helped me to realize that I had the ability to learn to read. He not only encouraged me; he lovingly helped me with words during Sunday School sessions without making me feel conspicuous in front of the other pupils. Then, with my developing reading skills, I began to search out and ponder truths in the Bible and in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. When I was thirteen another Sunday School teacher, a Christian Science practitioner, helped me to catch a glimpse of the spiritual meaning of this statement (Science and Health, p. 207): "There is but one primal cause." I began to see that God was truly the only cause in my life. And over the next several years I often used this statement as the basis of prayer for myself.
Even though I appreciated all that the doctors who had treated me had tried to do, while I was away at college I decided to give up medical means and to rely completely on God in Christian Science for healing. After that, at times I felt that my family was quite concerned for my wellbeing, but I still held to my decision. Mrs. Eddy states in Science and Health (p. 147): "Late in the nineteenth century I demonstrated the divine rules of Christian Science. They were submitted to the broadest practical test, and everywhere, when honestly applied under circumstances where demonstration was humanly possible, this Science showed that Truth had lost none of its divine and healing efficacy, even though centuries had passed away since Jesus practised these rules on the hills of Judaea and in the valleys of Galilee." I felt that it wasn't "humanly possible" for me to experience healing if there was even the slightest desire to take medication.
